Question productivity
The question of productivity arises in people's minds if they are unsatisfied with their current state; their current state could be anything like they are unable to say no to others and wasting their time and frustrating later or a dilemma regarding the selection of the pathway or dissatisfaction with their current role, or they are maybe suffering from something that has happened with them in the past, or it could be that they are filled with assumptions and unable to drop them, or they could be facing a barrier to entry for something or they could be on the verge of survivability issue, or they are maybe facing issues while trying to change their habits, or they may be trying to do a lot of things at once, or they are having over expectation from themselves based on assumptions, or they may be suffering from some illness, or maybe they are trying to revolutionize the world and end all kinds of suffering from the world but are unable to find a pathway or perhaps they are going through an identity crisis?
The reason behind the cause?
To increase productivity, first, one needs to identify the cause of low productivity and then must find out the reason behind the cause itself.
Is it that you are scrolling through videos or posts infinitely and then regretting later, and you end up scrolling because the habit was developed because of the surroundings and the surrounding didn't have any mentors and that caused some failure which led to intolerance towards you from your family or peers and that build a frustration inside you and that frustration is causing you to react to everything around you, and you want to improve everything but somehow unable to progress and that builds an infinite loop of frustration and scrolling because of lack of faith for yourself and no intuition?
Is it that you have set a benchmark for yourself due to assumptions, influencers, peer pressure, or anything but are now unable to fulfill those benchmarks but not in a situation that allows you to drop your personality and build up a new one without being judged or without being teased?
Is it that you are in a different stage and expecting something from a different stage, like you are building technical competencies but expecting to get a full-time role that requires proficiency in technical competencies along with social skills, or maybe you have technical competencies but don't have proof through projects and internship, or perhaps you have projects and internship but unable to create an impact through real-world user or perhaps you have all that but unable to showcase and market yourself or perhaps you have joined junior role but now looking to move up in the hierarchy without creating an impact.
Assessing your situation and finding a pathway
Whatever the situation and reason for your low productivity, you must find your pathway along with your constraints using the available tools that suit your needs.
Constraints are the ones that will shape you and that will build up a unique insight, toolset, and intuition for you that will later turn into an unfair advantage.
Depending on your constraints and current personality, you need to follow the pathway of knowledge or a path of devotion, or maybe a combination of both.
Assuming you are in a situation where it is possible to find a mentor whom you can trust and then direct all of your time and energy in following the pathway laid by the mentor, then you can be devoted towards your mentor without the need for questioning, doubting, and being suspicious.
Maybe you are a person who wants to try things on your own, or perhaps it's unable to get a mentor with your needs, and you are required to build your pathway with a lot of trial and error, and you need to accept that tradeoff or drop your question then assuming that you didn't want to fit in the mold the only thing left for you is to arm yourself with knowledge, gather tools, build your tools and accept the reality.
Or you can get a mentor to help you in certain areas, but the alignment is missing for others, and you must go through iterations on your own for those.
Whatever your current situations are, you need to learn how to prioritize, build your timeline, develop your habit, find your unfair advantages, and avoid FOMO by writing down all the goals and how to fulfill the hollowness inside you.
Action items
Yoga means union, and yoga provides a mechanism to be free from history; hence I recommend starting with "Isha Kriya" in the morning and then prioritizing your task and then planning for the rest of your day, and making sure to avoid multi-tasking in the initial days and focusing on one thing at a time.
Please write down your tasks, prioritize them, schedule them, and use Pomodoro to avoid mental pressure and decision fatigue, leading to better decisions, focus, and relationships with others which will help prevent FOMO and gives you a metric to improve. Write down your dreams, long-term and short-term goals, your regrets, plans, and everything that you can think of.
Read and implement "The One Thing", "5 AM club", "The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck" and "The Unfair Advantage". Always dissect whether you are doubting, suspecting, or questioning something.
The cult of being perfect
It's great to improve yourself and increase productivity, but thinking of implementing everything in one go will lead to an infinite loop itself; hence it's better to improve and enforce one aspect at a time. It's better to keep improving even after achieving your benchmarks rather than being in a static state after some time.
Please don't react to the things around you; make sure you always respond by assessing the situation first, then dissecting yourself with why you need to interact with it, then building up a plan, and then focusing on specific tasks.